At what point did you stop becoming afraid of the fire alarm?

For me, it was around sophomore year of high school (10th grade), and because I started to hang out with my friends more and often go to loud parties the suddenness of the alarms began to drift away, and I didn’t feel like I had to cover my ears while evacuating. It was also at the time that my hearing began to stop being sensitive. I’m starting senior year in two months.

When I entered high school, my high school has voice evac which is less startling and less scary than a traditional horn strobe

After I graduated high school but that was because I was so sure that in college that there wouldn’t be any fire drills or I wouldn’t be caught up in any of them so it bared not to think about it. This despite the fact that the college I went to ORIGINALLY had 4051 horns on 4050-80 flashers with no FIRE lettering which would have been very loud before they upgraded my second year there.

Also I was right. In 9 years if being in college (switching majors around… don’t ask) I was only caught in two of them and they weren’t drills. The faculty lounge microwave ended up burning food and causing smoking to trip the system. :stuck_out_tongue:

Afraid? Maybe around eighth grade, when my interest began to pick up.
I stopped plugging my ears for school fire drills around sophomore or junior year of high school. The ZNS’s still startled me, but otherwise they weren’t too loud. Eventually I just sorta stopped being afraid of the alarms going off.

I was never afraid of the actual alarms myself. I was just started when they went off especially if I knew about it and dreaded it.

I was really more afraid of the fire drills themselves or anticipating that there would be one rather than the fire alarms. The noise certainly scared me, but I usually never anticipated something happening with the alarms on a regular school day or out in another setting, such as a shopping mall. I lean more towards being interested in fire alarms than I do fearing them.

My fear of fire alarms finished when I became a teenager. I was already in middle school during that period.

[quote=fierlarmz_09 post_id=84294 time=1561458931 user_id=5255]

My fear of fire alarms finished when I became a teenager. I was already in middle school during that period.

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I was ONLY a little afraid…

My fear ended when I was roughly 14-15 years old, today I’m still a bit startled (Uuuuuughh!)

Not afraid either, just had severe anxiety when they went off unexpectedly or if I knew they are gunna go off. So as of right now, I guess I don’t anymore, as I set them off now :wink:

Here’s a complicated answer. My fear went away for the most part once I got to elementary school. Since there were no horns in the classrooms, we’d just hear them echoing in the hallways. It wouldn’t get loud until the teacher opened the door.

The exception was that I dreaded fire drills during gym. At Linden (kindergarten and first grade) it sounded pretty much like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdrg_ToDP1c&t=526s, and we had to walk through an emergency exit with a -9838 blaring inside.

At Jefferson, we had 4003 voice evac in the larger rooms, with the 500 Hz stutter tone and a message that includes the phrase “responsible personnel are responding”. There was just something ominous about a deep voice projecting from the four 2902-9711 speakers while the 4903-9101’s flashed their little stars, especially when you’re used to alarms that look like this just going “buzz”.

Once I got to middle school, I stopped being afraid of them, not counting a bit of anticipatory anxiety I experienced due to pre-announced fire drills.

I’ve always thought alarms in the gym were much quieter than in the hallways, especially mechanical horns like those ones. It may be due to the amount of open space.

But I’m still afraid of the System Sensor SpectrAlert Advance alarms.

[quote=fierlarmz_09 post_id=84667 time=1564467871 user_id=5255]

But I’m still afraid of the System Sensor SpectrAlert Advance alarms.

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Do they have those at your school?

Yes, they do

So you are telling me that 86 years ago they had SpectrAlert Advances then since you are 100 years old according to your profile and you would have entered high school when you were 14. So that would have been 1933 when I’m not sure that ANY horns would have been around.

You DO see where I am coming from right?

Back in the 1930s kids at school weren’t afraid of the fire alarm because there were no fire alarms around to be afraid of.

I swear and I’m not trying to be mean but his stories have more holes in them then swiss cheese.

[quote="Simplex 4051" post_id=84691 time=1564725671 user_id=18]

I swear and I’m not trying to be mean but his stories have more holes in them then swiss cheese.

[/quote]

LOLLLL

[quote="Simplex 4051" post_id=84687 time=1564693043 user_id=18]

So you are telling me that 86 years ago they had SpectrAlert Advances then since you are 100 years old according to your profile and you would have entered high school when you were 14. So that would have been 1933 when I’m not sure that ANY horns would have been around.

You DO see where I am coming from right?

[/quote]

[off-topic]Either they used a bogus DoB or they’re just trying to troll, if it’s the latter then it’s rather more amusing that anything else.[/off-topic]

Anyways back on topic, I’ll just add something else to what I stated on my fear of FAs:

So as you know I used to be afraid of FAs up until I was 14 or so years old, right? This is where it gets complicated.

My fear really spiked when I was in kindergarten (mind you I don’t live in America, rather on the other side of the pond as you would say :mrgreen:, so yeah I assume this is the equivalent to my country’s “école Maternelle”), from that I literally used to eavesdrop conversations to hear when a fire drill would be planned (that didn’t work out for obvious reasons…) and upon hearing the FA, I would literally freeze, completely paralyzed by fear (yes).

When I turned 10, I started to gradually become less wary of the FA, this is also what started my interest and fascination (I used to watch YouTube Videos of the sound of the FA, I suppose that most people did that to… Uh… Tone their fear down?), when I entered Junior High, I was less afraid but more startled than anything else.

When I graduated from Junior High (or whatever the equivalent of French “Collège” is) to a “Lycée” (or whatever equivalent you have in NA), we didn’t have any fire alarms (belive it or not but the lycée I attended to was very small, probably one of the smallest school establishments in France!) we did however had smoke alarms in the classrooms (I can tell you that I was sorta flabbergasted when I saw that, am not kiddin’!)

To this day, I’m still startled, hearing the FA kick in is enough to make me jump, but that’s about it.